


reasons wretched and divine

by wanderingalonelypath



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Female Anders, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Past Whipping, smiting, warning for Templars/the Circle in general
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27797047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingalonelypath/pseuds/wanderingalonelypath
Summary: And they don't know, she supposes, about how a Smite feels like a brand of Tranquility all in itself; how it hollows you out and scrapes you raw, leaving nothing but screaming nerves and empty veins. How the helplessness of it lays a dense blanket over your mind, until you become the shell you always fear. How it strips away each and all of your defenses and reminds you:This is who you are. This is your barest self. Useless. Worthless.How it reminds you that you arenothingwithout your magic.
Relationships: Anders/Fenris (Dragon Age)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	reasons wretched and divine

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a pretty heavy fic. I took some liberties regarding the effects of Smites and Anders' backstory. We never hear about anything other than solitary confinement, but Kinloch is probably just as bad as the other Circles. This is tagged as pre-relationship Fenders, and it is VERY pre, but it doesn't focus on the relationship. It focuses more on Fenris and some of the rest of the gang getting a taste of what it's really like in the Circles. Please make sure you read the tags.
> 
> Also, I've really been wanting to write some Female Anders.

She had gotten too comfortable fighting with a group; she sees that now as she looks back.

She had grown too used to someone always having her back, to someone always coming to her aid if the enemies pressed down on her. The sharp awareness that only an apostate can have had dulled during her years in Kirkwall, when she always had a smirking rogue or a brooding warrior to keep the worst of the enemies off of her so she could fight from a distance. It was this complacency that allowed the rogue Templar to sneak up on her.

She could blame it on other things; the dark of the Lowtown night around them, moonlight barely hitting the streets over the high limestone walls and spikes of the slave city, darkening her vision. She could blame it on the group of them all coming off of their buzz as they left the Hanged Man, alcohol still dulling her mind even though Justice had scolded her for every sip. She could blame it on any circumstance, but the result was the same.

A sword biting harshly into her back, and as she turned to fire back the Smite had hit her fully in the face.

Her staff fell from boneless fingers and she collapsed like a puppet, strings-cut, abandoned. The Templar smiled that vicious grin that she knew too well and for a second she was back in Fereldan, caught escaping again, and she knew exactly what that glint in his eyes meant. All she could do was watch with hollow eyes as he reached for her.

And then Fenris was glowing in the night, beheading the Templar with one savage swing.

The others were likely catching their breath and picking spoils from the battle behind her but the sound was deafened, like someone had stuffed cotton into her ears. Fenris was sneering down at her once he turned. “If you cannot pay proper attention to your surroundings then you are useless in battle, mage.” It took Andrastian effort to even blink back at him, the raw pain of _reaching_ in her veins trapping a scream in her throat. His sneer uncurled, until he was looking down at her with something approaching worry. “Mage?” He knelt. She didn’t move. Then- _”Hawke!”_

Then it was Hawke kneeling in front of her, blue eyes searching her own. Movement flickered on the edges of her vision, blurry colors that she dimly noted as her companions. Justice was thunderously silent in her mind, and her soul cried out in pain from the lack of both him and her magic. “-ders?” Hawke was talking, but her face was growing dimmer in her view. She didn’t react fast enough to catch her when she slumped over.

That’s when they noticed the blood.

The stars were dancing overhead as she was hurriedly carried back to the Hanged Man. “...clinic...too far….wrong with….she talk?”

And they don't know, she supposes, about how a Smite feels like a brand of Tranquility all in itself; how it hollows you out and scrapes you raw, leaving nothing but screaming nerves and empty veins. How the helplessness of it lays a dense blanket over your mind, until you become the shell you always fear. How it strips away each and all of your defenses and reminds you: _This is who you are. This is your barest self. Useless. Worthless._

How it reminds you that you are _nothing_ without your magic.

She blinked and she was in Varric’s rooms, the dwarf himself staring down at her in panic. Someone sat her up, a bottle pressed to her mouth, and she was already swallowing before the scent of one of her own elfroot potions hit her nose. _Too trusting. They’ll turn you over too, if you’re this much trouble._ She pushed the voice, not Justice but the worst part of her, away. It was good that they had one laying around. The Smite was beginning to work out of her system but that wound on her back wasn’t getting any smaller, and she wouldn’t be able to do magic for a while.

Her vision finally sharpened, her hearing slowly following. She sat in Varric’s bed, leaning heavily into Hawke’s bulk with most of their companions-friends-around them. Varric and Merril looked desperately worried, Isabela was nearly buzzing with nervous energy. Fenris was a mountain, stoic but his eyebrows were drawn together in a way that she knew meant he was thinking deeply.

“Freckles?” Varric was the first to notice she was back. “What the hell happened out there?”

Oh, right. He hadn’t been with them. He just saw Hawke-because it had to be Hawke, she was the only one strong enough besides Fenris, and he wouldnt’t-carry her in, unresponsive and bleeding.

She opened her mouth but her voice was slow to follow, burning molasses in her throat. She managed to force it out. “Smite.” And all at once the room charged with tension. Like she said; they didn’t know. And if their reactions were anything to go by, they had never seen it before.

“That’s-that was a Smite? That’s what it does?” Hawke’s voice was horrified and Anders knew she was thinking of Bethany, half a world away and slaying darkspawn, and how close she had courted that little death every day she lived in Kirkwall.

“You are still bleeding, mage.” Fenris’s voice was impassive and practical, as always, and it snapped them out of their dread. She could see the worry still on Merril’s face, an empathy only their kind would ever know, but it was getting edged out by panic.

Who heals the healer?

It was Hawke, as always, who reached for the back of her robes first, and she already had a hand on her laces before Anders’ muddled mind remembered that they could _not_ see her back, that there was a reason she always bathed separately and turned oddly when changing around them. She jerked away from her clumsily, would have fallen off the bed if Isabela hadn’t caught her. “Easy, sweetling. We need to see how bad it is.”

_Oh, you will._

She had neither the energy nor the presence to fight them, so she resignedly allowed Bela to place her back on the bed as Hawke quickly tugged her robes free, slowly where they stuck to her skin with blood. She felt the moment her back became bare in the candlelight, felt the way Hawke's hand dropped away to try to cover a gasp. Felt the energy in the room shift again when they all saw what she was trying to hide.

Her back was an ugly thing, crisscrossed with knotted scar tissues, long lines left by the Templar’s favorite whip at Kinloch. She had tried to count them once, when she first arrived at Kirkwall, twisting around to glare into a broken mirror she had scrounged up in Darktown. She counted 12 before the memories of it made tears blur her eyes.

Tears she could hear in Hawke’s voice now. “ _Fuck._ "

Merril was whispering something and Varric looked faintly sick. Bela couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from the hideous ruin of her back, and Fenris.

Her eyes lingered. Fenris.

His mask had finally cracked as his eyes raked over the scars. She could see the cataloging in his mind. Purposeful. Layered. Meant for pain. Meant for punishment. There was more surprise in his eyes then she had seen in the four years she had known him, and as he looked at her she thought they had a kind of kinship now, too.

“H...how?” It was Bela who asked. It didn’t occur to her until then that even living in the city of chains, most of them still didn’t think that Circles, that Templars, took it this far. They wanted a simple explanation; a battle wound, a nasty fall, anything that would help them continue to sleep soundly in this city watered with the blood of her people.

She would not give it to them.

“I tried to escape a lot. This is what they did on the good days.” Her voice was the shattering of an empty bottle, a broken thing thrown away. She knew what the next question would be. The silence in her head was deafening, and any witty jokes or acerbic quips she might usually spit out to avoid the pain of her past were vacant. Gone like Justice. Gone like her magic. Her body cried out for the Fade but it didn’t answer, and she knew it wouldn’t for hours yet.

“What happened on the bad days?”

“They raped me."

The words fell from her mouth with a devastating clarity, and she didn’t realize until they came out how long she had wanted to scream them. To throw them at Fenris like knives, to hurl them at Varric and Isabela and all the cowards in the world who buried their heads in the sand and ignored the cries. She wanted to rage at them, _look, you see, look what you have done to me. Look what you have let happen to me. I was fourteen the first time they had me and I screamed my throat raw, I couldn’t talk for days. Look at what is left of me._

There were no words left for them to say, apparently. Despite how vindicated she felt now that she had laid her pain at their feet, she knew she would regret it tomorrow. She knew it when she saw Merril bent over Varric’s chamber pot, throwing up the ale and fries they had eaten only hours earlier, when the world was easier. She knew it by the way Isabela was holding her hair back with shaking hands. She knew by the way Varric had taken out his ponytail just with the force of how he ran his hands through his hair. By the way Hawke was gently rubbing a poultice on her wound, how her shoulders were hitching with silent sobs.

By the way Fenris was staring at her, mouth open, realization in his eyes.

She was too empty, now, to feel the triumph she should feel at finally, _finally_ , winning this war with him. She couldn’t feel it tonight.

She couldn’t feel much of anything tonight.


End file.
